These days, we’re all marketers. If you’ve got a website, if you’re producing a newsletter and/or a blog, if you’re posting to social media, you’re engaged in content marketing. But in many cases, this effort is inconsistent, poorly developed and executed, so you may be sabotaging your efforts. With Google’s last few algorithm changes, good writing has become critical to content marketing’s success.

The good news, the bad news

While content marketing represents enormous opportunity to get in front of our clients and prospects, it also makes our jobs a lot harder–besides being the CEO, CMO, CFO and COO of our businesses, we have to be skilled and clever writers and social media experts. And thanks to WordPress and other web technologies, we are now supposed to be updating our website content on a regular basis. We need to be writing clever blogposts and newsletters that showcase our expertise. There’s a lot to love about content marketing—it’s free, it’s accessible and it doesn’t discriminate. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can become a player in the content marketing space. But doing it well requires a strategy, terrific writing and consistency.

A holistic approach to content marketing

Ours is a holistic approach; we make content work for us, and it starts with blogging, the workhorse of your content marketing program. Blogposts can be repurposed to your monthly newsletter, posted to Linkedin to reach a whole new marketing channel, and excerpts can be posted to social media. By consistently hitting the online space with fresh, quality content, you’re steadily increasing your SEO value and positioning yourself as an industry thought leader. This is what content marketing is all about.

A caveat—the content has to be smart, insightful and most of all, well-written

It’s not enough to have clever ideas and keen insights–you have to be able to write about them. When you write something, you’re putting a line in the sand positioning yourself as an expert. If what you produce is rambling, punctuated with grammatical errors, you’re going to be perceived as someone who’s a whole lot less expert. Google’s last few algorithm changes—Panda, Hummingbird and now Mobilegeddon–have made it clear that quality content is nonnegotiable. You can’t trick Google anymore and expect to show up in search engines.

Our comprehensive content marketing strategy includes:

Website landing pages. This is the what generally gets overlooked while people get caught up in the sexier matters of web design and image selection. But if you want your website to show up in search engines, it’s content that needs your attention. Besides—people come to your site because they want to know more about you and what you do—it’s your job to provide compelling content that answers their questions. Each of your services should be on its own freestanding landing page so it has its independent url. Landing pages should be 300+ words to rank well in search engines. They need to be specifically focused on the keyword/phrase, use images and alt tags. Each page needs its own unique metadescription.

Write a weekly blog on something topical. Create an editorial calendar so we’re not missing important dates, seasonal events, etc. Blogs become the workhorse of a content marketing program—they can be repurposed to newsletters and excerpts can be posted to social media. They help raise the SEO value of your website.

Producing a monthly newsletter. Generally an article or two. I like to include a case study. People love to read examples of how you’ve helped another client, because there may application for them. Telling a story is infinitely more powerful than just telling someone about your services. We also create and customize a newsletter template, identify and import images, produce and manage the newsletter process.

Social Media. Create accounts and post to social media sites at least 2x/week. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+. Include images.

Making sure that all of your communications are integrated—website, social media, newsletters and blogs as well as any print communications and signage. Ensure that all of these are consistently branded, that links are all working etc.

Keyword research. Identifying keywords and using these as much as possible throughout all content.

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Who We Are

We're writers and internet marketing experts. What sets us apart? A strong background in traditional marketing and advertising, but we've been working in the online space for more than 15 years. We're helping our clients show up in search engines, building online brands.